


A Curse of Curls

by seenonlyfromadistance



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 01:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seenonlyfromadistance/pseuds/seenonlyfromadistance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras' hair is beautiful, golden, frustrating, and on the barricade it is covered in blood-- just like him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Curse of Curls

There was always an idea in his head that he would keep his hair pragmatic and short, without any flair or flounce or affectation-- he was not Courfeyrac, after all, and cared more for practicality than fashion. Yet somehow he always managed to forget to cut it, and before he knew it there were long, romantic curls falling over his forehead. It would have been frustrating if he didn't have better things to be frustrated about... except for when Coufeyrac would lean across the table to tidy his part for him, or when Grantaire would playfully pluck at his curls when walking past. Then his hair was infuriating. When it reached that point, when girls gawped at him on the street and enviously touched their own carefully piled hair, then Enjolras would dig out his pair of scissors and work to remedy his situation.

He knows he is beautiful, and he hates it and works against it at every turn.

He dresses simply, and in muted colors. He frowns. 

It has it's advantages, of course, to be handsome. Obviously. But nevertheless, Enjolras would prefer to be plain. He would prefer to be listened to and taken seriously because of his ideas and not his face. He knows people have been initially drawn to him because of his good looks, and that many of them have then been caught in the web of his personality. Combeferre initially dismissed him because of his looks, and Enjolras had to fight for his respect. For that reason, among many others, Enjolras loves him. The first time he met Grantaire, the man had stared at him silently, shocked into a stillness something like horror, for five minutes. It was the most uncomfortable thing Enjolras had ever experienced. Even when he had realized no conversation was going to take place and had rescinded his hand and had walked away, Grantaire had continued to stare. It was as if he'd been struck by lightening. 

Eventually Grantaire did come over to actually speak to him, and to apologize, but he never managed to get the hand shake that Enjolras had initially offered and then repealed.

He plans to get his hair cut before the week is out, but then Lamarque dies on Sunday and from there... well, there is simply no time. His hair cannot be a priority when the future of France is at hand. 

He dresses for the barricades on the morning of Lamarque's funeral, knowing that the day is at last at hand; all their planning, all their ideals... everything will come to fruition on this day, and Enjolras finds that he is nervous. His stomach churns in worry. In his red coat and tall boots, his second best trousers and one of his nicer shirts, he cuts a heroic, dashing figure. The coat had been a gift from his friends (under Courfeyrac's advisement, of course), for this twenty-fifth birthday, just a few short months ago, half a joke and half a serious suggestion that he wear more colors. He has never worn it before, and he thinks he looks flamboyant and slightly foolish in it. Courfeyrac had encouraged him to wear it the night before, saying seriously that it makes him look like a leader of men, and would set him out from the crowd. Was that what he really wanted? Enjolras wondered. To be a leader set apart? 

Nevertheless, the whole image suits him, he thinks. The coat, the boots, all of it. Even his mess of hair suits him. He plucks at his curls for a moment, rearranging them idly but not knowing precisely how to style them. Feeling stupid and vain, and frustrated by those feelings, he gives it up.

For a moment, looking down at himself, he feels unreal, like a character in a story. He smooths the front of his jacket with flat palms, feeling the red under his fingers. _No_ , he thinks, _I'm real. I live and die and will bleed._

For a moment he is struck by an image of himself, covered in dirt and blood, his own and others. It is a vision of the future and it rattles his heart. He sees himself in a mirror which lives a neglected life on his dresser. He looks brave under his romantic mop of hair, but his eyes are scared, even though he doesn't think he feels necessarily frightened. Perhaps he should, but rather he feels excited. His heart is tight and trembling, beating fast and hard against his ribs. He is ready for a fight, and looks like a child playing at being a hero. 

How disappointing. 

With a breath, he brushes his hair off his forehead with finality and turns away from the mirror. There's no time to humor vanity. There is work to be done. 

But then his hair is in his eyes the whole time. It frustrates him immensely, like an itch he cannot scratch. A man hardly older than himself gets fingers into his curls and pulls his face into the side of the barricade, smashing him hard. In the stars that follow, Enjolras tries to pick out of the constellations unrealized dreams and familiar memories. He has dropped his rifle, and so throws a punch half-blindly, and thinks it connects. For a split second he sees that the darkness dominating his vision is the inside of a rifle barrel. Someone tugs at his red collar to pull him out of harms way. There is an explosion near his right ear that sets his head ringing. People, his friends, are yelling all around him, some of it in his direction, some not. 

Combeferre presses a cloth to his forehead, where something has split open. There is the hot taste of blood in his mouth and the slick feel of it on his lips. Something has smashed and burst in his sinuses. 

"Go inside," someone is saying, and there are hands all over him, passing him from friend to friend back towards the Musain. "Go inside, Enjolras, it's alright." 

The blood begins to clot in his hairline, and finally his hair is out of his eyes. 

When he finally comes back to his senses, he notices that his jacket is spotted with dark spots of his own gore. 

He feels like a man more than he ever has before. 

He makes it into the Musain in a haze, stumbling. He can taste only blood and see only smoke. It is only for the moment that passes through the threshold of the cafe that no one is touching him-- and then immediately there are rough hands on his arms, manhandling him without delicacy into a chair. The jostling makes his head give a stabbing throb of pain, and Enjolras hisses, sneers, grimaces.

"Good god, Enjolras," Grantaire's voice says from somewhere out in the fog. "You look like a ghoul. What happened to you?"

"We're at war." The world starts to clear. Now he can see Grantaire's worried, haggard face close to his and can feel his hands suddenly gentle, brushing across his face, wiping blood from his lips and from between his eyebrows. Brushing hair from his forehead and temples.

"Christ."

"No," Enjolras says. "No."

"You could have died." 

Enjolras doesn't know how to respond to that. His head is still swimming. It's obvious that he could have died; he's been preparing himself for death since he realized that the revolution was a runaway train heading towards a blind curve. Haven't they all? Haven't they all realized they would face death, and were more likely than not to shake hands with it? 

"Oh, Enjolras." Grantaire peels off Enjolras' coat, now more shades of red than it was just an hour before, and hangs it gently over the back of a chair. Enjolras allows this, mostly because his head is still scrambled. Grantaire loosens his vest and peels that off too. Half registering the way Grantaire's fingers drag over his chest and shoulders and arms, Enjolras sighs. He knows he should protest, should shake off Grantaire's attentions and his own disorientation, knows he should be out on the barricade organizing men and supplies, but there's something so comforting in the physical touch of another human being. And it's so very nice to be sitting down. 

Then there's something wet on his forehead, and pungent, and it stings. He recoils but Grantaire holds him still. It's brandy, splashed onto a cloth and pressed onto the wound. 

"Ouch."

"Don't want that to get infected, do we? Don't want anything to scar that pretty face of yours."

"Stop that, Grantaire. You know I don't like to be called pretty." 

Grantaire coughs out a laugh and dabs at his forehead. A dribble of blood and brandy slides down Enjolras' face and without thinking he flicks out his tongue to lick it away. The flavors-- blood, dirt, smoke, brandy-- seem to him to encompass his whole life. 

"But you are, Enjolras. You're beautiful." 

In this moment, where his head is reeling and he feels nauseous, and the hot June air is stifling enough that he is glad Grantaire has half undressed him so at least he can breathe-- in this moment he looks into Grantaire's eyes and sees all at once that when Grantaire says that he's beautiful, he isn't talking about his face, at least not entirely. He recognizes now that Grantaire has always seen his deeper into him. Has seen, perhaps, his soul. 

In that moment, he realizes that Grantaire is in love with him.

Or rather, in love with an _idea_ of him, because who could truly love him? Enjolras thinks. Who could love a cold and violent man like he feels he truly is, despite his Adonis face and romantic hair? He feels pity then, for Grantaire's mistake. 

"I'm not beautiful. I'm brutal. I am cruel. I am terrible." 

The weight of these words settle on him, and in his concussed state he begins to cry-- just gently, a few wet tears running down his cheeks. 

"Yes," Grantaire says quietly, his hands still at Enjolras' face, still touching and cleaning with a delicate tenderness. He thumbs away the tears without comment. "Yes, you are all those things. And you are kind and brave and yes, you are beautiful."

Smiling sadly, Grantaire turns to find a different cloth, this one seeped in water. He washes the last remnants of blood and the stickiness of the brandy from Enjolras' face. "There, there," he sighs, leaning in to lick at a drop that still lingers on a sharp cheekbone. He laughs. Enjolras is startled by the gesture, and through his haze traces the touch of Grantaire's tongue with his fingers. "It's alright. Everything is alright." Leaning back, he gives Enjolras a once over, looking proud and sad and a little embarrassed simultaneously. There is something heavy lingering behind his eyes that Enjolras doesn't think he has ever seen before. 

"You look nearly alive again."

"Not for long," Enjolras jokes bitterly, his first admission that he, of all of them, is sure to die. In his heart of hearts, he hopes that he is the only one who has to fall for his cause. He would happily trade his life for France, or for all his friends lives, or for a single one of their lives.

"Don't say that," Grantaire whispers, but doesn't deny the truth of it. "Please. It hurts me to hear it. Don't say it." 

"Grantaire," Enjolras begins, taking hold of Grantaire's wrist. He's not sure exactly what he wants to say, but he knows he wants to say something and trusts that the words will come. This may be his last chance, after all. "Grantaire, I must--" But he is cut off by a fresh clatter of gunfire and yelling from outside. 

Enjolras snaps to alertness, his head suddenly clearing, and leaps to his feet. With one last, sharp backwards glance at Grantaire-- still kneeling by the chair Enjolras had so recently occupied, looking so small and lost-- Enjolras grabs his red coat and runs out of the cafe and into the street. 

Still blood stained, he arrives back on the barricade as a frightful ghoul of republican vengeance. He is fierce, he is wild, he is unyielding. His hair falls into his eyes once more.

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I'm just really enchanted by this idea that Enjolras is a) always bumping his head on things and getting beat up, and b) hates that he's so beautiful. Also that he would be totally prim and crisp if he had time to get a haircut or tie his cravat properly but the revolution is too time consuming.


End file.
